MUSIC REVIEW : Philharmonia Baroque Plays Bach and Vivaldi

A brief new residency for the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra at the L.A. County Museum of Art began Wednesday night when the ensemble’s music director, Nicholas McGegan, led the 16-member band in a Vivaldi/Bach program.

Nothing fancy: No recently discovered works. No big-name Baroque stars; the six featured soloists are all members of the ensemble. No programmatic novelties.

Still, the San Francisco-based group’s genuine claims to fame--high ideals, informed musical practices, high technical achievement and authentic instruments--were all present and operative. Such claims have to include, of course, McGegan’s exigent standards and his consistent conductorial skills.

In six, mostly short, Baroque concertos, a degree of blandness, due in part to the size of Leo S. Bing Theater, emerged too often. If the room were smaller and held only 450, rather than 600, for instance, the sound of a harpsichord on the stage might carry to the back more easily.

As things stood, Wednesday, however, the apparently diffuse orchestral tone produced by the Bay Area musicians seemed to lack both bite and distinctness.

Most successful of these half-dozen works were the Vivaldi concertos that opened each half of the program.

The bumptious Concerto Grosso in D minor, RV 565, made a felicitous racket, nicely presided over by soloists Elizabeth Blumen stock and Katherine Kyme, violins, and David Bowles, cello. And the soloistless Concerto in C for strings and continuo, RV 278, an elegant exercise in strong feelings and chiaroscuro, displayed a firm ring of sincerity.

Otherwise, color seemed in short supply. There was a spate of earnest soloism in the Concerto Grosso in G minor, RV 578, wherein violinists Kyme and Blumenstock and cellist Sarah Freiberg led the way. But Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in F minor and Triple Concerto in A minor, BWV 1044, and Vivaldi’s Flute Concerto, “Il Gardellino,” all suffered from a lack of dynamic contrasts, from often-mumbled soloism and from blurred, ill-defined musical lines.